A heuristic technique for generating minimal path and cutsets of a general network

Reliability evaluation techniques employ a variety of tools for system modeling and calculation of reliability indices. Amongst the most popular tools are network-based algorithms founded on the concept of minimal paths and minimal cutsets. This paper presents a heuristic programming technique for deducing minimal paths of a network. In this technique, only minimal paths are immediately generated without explicitly determining whether or not a path is minimal. This technique has been implemented on a digital computer to generate a minimal path matrix, which is in turn utilized to generate minimal cutsets of the network. In terms of computational speed, the results obtained compare well with existing algorithms. The technique requires minimum memory storage and minimum user-defined data to represent the topology of a network and follows a modular design strategy. Use of the algorithm is illustrated by examples.